Greers Ferry Interview, William Carter [Audio]

"When President John F. Kennedy was in Little Rock, I believe you were assigned to his guard detail. Could you tell us something about that?"
"Yes. Well, at the time I was assigned to the Little Rock Field Office, and when we received word that President Kennedy would come to Arkansas, they notified us that he would visit the Greers Ferry Dam dedication and also the Little Rock Livestock Exposition and would speak at the show grounds out here. We had four agents from the White House arrive here and my superior agent here in Little Rock went to Greers Ferry with the two White House agents and they were in charge of the advance arrangements, security arrangements, for the president at Greers Ferry and I handled, along with the two White House agents, the arrangements at the Little Rock Livestock Show here. We set up security and all the advance arrangements for the president; and I might add that I went back to Washington after President Kennedy was here in Arkansas, and the agent who was in charge of all the advance preparations, the one single man who had this responsibility, was called into the White House after we had returned to Washington. He was called in the following Saturday -- I think President Kennedy was here on Thursday as I recall -- and on Saturday this agent was called in and President Kennedy invited him into his office and told him that the Arkansas trip was one of the best prepared. He thought that the security was superior to any other trip he'd made and not only the security, the Secret Service [also] has a responsibility, or did have with President Kennedy, of keeping him on schedule. One of the agents of prime responsibility was to see that he kept his itinerary, and everything went smooth here. He arrived on time, he left on time and was able to keep his schedule, and he was, I think he was very proud of the fact that he was punctual, and when you have a crowd of 35,000 people waiting to hear you -- of course, they're very demanding -- and the president did not like to keep them waiting, so the trip here was a very successful one. Of course, we had a lot of security problems that are common to every state, but by and large, this trip here was a very successful one. Of course this was, at the time, President Kennedy was coming into a hostile area. Arkansas was not a Kennedy State. In fact, we really thought that he'd receive a cool reception, but he came in here and had a very warm reception and the people, I think, gave him a very warm greeting."